Easy Revolvers From Cardboard

We have a Fastelavn in this part of the world (Denmark) in the evening before 40 days of fasting leading up to Easterpassover. Many view this as an old tradition for the benefit of the children that dress up and can go knocking on doors asking for buns or candy, very much like the american halloween but without the death fixation. The tradition also includes banging on a barrel hung in a rope with a club in turn untill the barrel gives in and the candy falls out, much like a piñata. The tradition goes back to the middle ages where the barrel contained a black cat that represented the evil and once out it had to be beaten to death... as far as I know...

As the (to us) shocking parts of the tradition has been left out over time the kids dress up and smack the candy barrels to become a king or queen of Fastelavn. Sometimes parents also dress up to support the kids (and have fun..). This year I wanted to be a cowboy as I have a cowboy hat from new years eve, but sadly no toy revolvers. So.. home made toy revolvers made from cardboard.. an instructable formed in my mind... (I wrote it rather quickly, but was caught up in other stuff, hence the six month delay)

We always save some cardboard rolls from the toilet paper for the odd project or use them as toys for our pet rabbit, cardboard boxes are likewise always at hand, and I still have the black spray can from my treasure chest project, so there was no need to buy materials.

Hey Presto, on to the fun!!

Cardboard toilet rolls

Cardboard box (doubble layered)

Exacto knife

Hot glue gun and some glue sticks

Black spray can from the easy cardboard treasure chest project

1 sheet of printer paper

First you need to know what a revolver from ca. 1885 looks like. I had a toy revolver as a kid and it really didn't cross my mind to look it up on the internet. This would be a very quick and "dirty" mock up from memory and I was not aiming at accuracy at all.. (pun might be intended...)

A quick search for a picture of a revolver that resembles my memories just before posting this instructable yielded this web page amog many others:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Colt_revolver,_side_view_LCCN2006691778.jpg

When glancing at a revolver you can see that it consists of some basic parts: a central plate which holds everything together, a revolving magazine (giving it the name revolver), a barrel, a handle, a hammer to ignite the gunpowder in the cartridge, a trigger guard, and often times also a sight (which I left out in my version.. nope, no accuracy aimed for... 😉). These parts (except for the last two) I recreated in cardboard and paper.

Without the above picture at hand I drew the center plate from the size of inside of a cardboard roll so that the grip would fit my hand nicely. I wanted the hammer to be part of the center plate as the piece would be static so that was included into the silouette. I decided that another cardboard roll would be perfect for the magazine, so I made sure that the plate had the width equal to the diameter of the magazine. No measuring done here, just marking the inside of the roll as best I could on the cardboard.

The trigger guard was left out completely for ease of cutting the shape... aaand, I might have completely forgotten about it...

The barrel would be fitted onto the plate with some slots and I would glue it on so that the central plate wouldn' t extend beyond the magazine. In reality it's a way cooler construction but I kept it easy to build without any moving parts. At this time I had no idea of what material would be used for the barrel.

Once I had cut the plate I realized the cardboard would bend very easily, so I copied it onto a thicker (doubble) corrugated cardboard and made two pieces because I wanted two revolvers.

A slot was cut out of the roll, that I wanted to use as the handle. This allowed an overlap and I tried with a wedge on the other side, but it didn't fit the hand very well.

I started with the handle as I hadn't figured out the barrel yet except that it was going on the other end... This way I could still cut out another plate if I messed up. The roll that I first cut was discarded because of a bad fit in part due to a short length, but at least I knew roughly were I wanted to go after that.

I used a pair of scissors to cut a slot in a roll, that was eyeballed for size, and repeated that for the other revolver. I then put them onto either piece with the slot ending up where the trigger would be to see were I wanted to cut the wedge out on the backside. The wedge was cut almost down to the other end of the rolls. The dry fit felt bad in the hand and I cut it the rest of the way as well. Then I cut the edge to create an even line between the top and the bottom, which gave me a great feeling of the handles and these were glued to the plate by applying hot glue to the inside of the slots.

Then the backside of the handles were fitted and hot glue applied to the edge of the plate and both sides of the handles fitted as evenly as I could and held in place while the glue solidified. To give the handles extra strength I glued a triangular piece to the inside at the bottom. It went so fast, that I didn't take pictures until after I had completed the process. Then I used the original thin piece and the first roll as shown in the pictures to illustrate where the glue went, but lacking an extra hand I didn't apply the glue.

Next up were the magazines that I cut to length from two rolls and glued to the plate in the inside as shown in the pictures. I put hot glue on both sides, both ends, and upper and lower joints and used a scrap piece of cardboard roll to smooth it out and fasten them inside the handles.

I also added a piece of carboard on each side of the plate to give it more strength as one of the revolvers started to show a wobbly bending just in front of the handle.

That concludes the assembly so far, but what about the barrels? Read on and find out...

I had tried some different options for the barrel including a thick cardboard piece that was rolled up which was simply too big. I also considered using a thick plastic drinking straw or a plastic tube, but none of them were good solutions so in desparation I tried a piece of rolled up paper.

First I folded the piece of paper two times and wasn't concerned with length as I fully expected to cut it to fit the length afterwards. I realized that the length was perfect and rolled the folded paper over the straw and cut the piece of paper in half to create two barrels and rolled the cut end as well just for good measure and put them down to consider my next move.

I then rolled one barrel up around the straw and released the pressure slightly until it had loosened around the straw. Then I removed the straw and use the hot glue gun to fasten the rolled up piece of paper. I did the same with the other one and cut two slots into one end of each paper barrel . I made sure that the folded end was pointing out which I believed would give a nice look.

The barrels were easy to fit and glue onto the base, but I came close to position the first one in an askew direction... thankfully I caught the error in time and corrected it. The barrels were placed close to the top in line with the would-be bullet placement in the magazine.

What are revolvers without holsers? I really didn't want to know but was pressed for time, so I decided to make an attempt at speed building these. I cut off the long side lids from a box and pressed down on one side with a ruler to bend them to a half roll. Each bend was some centimeters from the next and I didn't measure them at all. When I did the next bending of the holster for the other revolver I did eyeball the bends, but still didn't measure them as I had done in the easy carborad treasure chest project. It went so fast at this point that I didn't take pictures of the steps. Hopefully the pictures speak for themsleves.

I then placed one revolver and rolled the bends over to create the shape the revolver needed to fit. When satisfied I marked where it would be glued to itself. Then I made a cut with the exacto knife from around where the barrel started to create a thinner section that would ensure that the revolver couldn't fall through the holser. I repeated the process for the other revolver but did remember to mirror it.

I was really running out of time and needed to fasten the holsters quickly to my belt and decided to cut two slots in each at an angle to immitate roughly how I remembered real holsters would hang. The holsters were then fitted onto my belt and the belt put back in place. The holsters are definately not pretty, but they worked.

As we were leaving for the Fastelavn's party I decided to pull out the spray can and give each revolver a layer of black paint or two. I left out the handles to have something to grip while spraying and because I didn't want paint on my hands while holding them. The paint dried very quickly though, so there were no problems. Some of the pictures show this as they were taken after the party.

I put on my costume that consisted of a cowboy hat, a scarf (borrowed from my wife), a grey shirt and jeans and of course the revolvers in their holsters. I also borrowed my daughter's hobby horse, which kind of completed the comical look :-)

I showed my newly made easy revolvers from cardboard to anyone interested and one of the kids fetched a toy revolver and we compared them. Here is the amazing thing: they matched very well! The general shape, magazine and barrel were alsmost exactly right. The differences also showed clearly as my handles were very simple and my revolvers lacked the trigger guards and sight.. and any moving parts.

I was satisfied with the results of around 3-4 hours split between the evening and the next morning (it took longer to write this instructable... It was a fun built because I cut corners eveywhere that I could (including eyeballing instead of measuring and ignoring the internet for references...). Would I change my build for a next time? Perhaps, because there were many ways I could have built my cardboard revolvers. One version could be made entirely from corrugated cardboard and no rolls, but the results would be equally fun because of the creation process.

Hmm, maybe I should add some cable strips for the trigger guards... and a snip of plastic or cardboard for the sights, but that's for another time.